A New Way Home
by RJDaae
Summary: A young woman pushes a baby carriage through unfriendly streets, with nowhere to go, unsure of where to turn. Originally written for the Mort Rouge phic contest six years ago, and now radically revised and expanded! A bit E/C and a bit R/C, but not very 'shippy'. Slightly AU, because Philippe is alive. Warning: character death. Technically a one-shot, but posting it in two parts.
1. Part One

This story was originally written as a 1500 word drabble for one of the Mort Rouge phic contests just about six years ago. I always promised myself that I would eventually go back and expand/revise/rewrite it, and now I finally have! It ended up as a rather long one-shot, which I have split in half for posting purposes (so there will be one more part in addition to this one). If you happened to have read the original story back in 2006, you'll find that this one is considerably different, but I think it's also much improved over the years. Please read & review!

**A New Way Home**

_part one_

The baby carriage swayed unsteadily as its threadbare tires clattered along the uneven pavement, stalling with a sudden shudder as one of the lopsided wheels became jammed in a crack in the concrete. The buggy's young occupant, who until that moment had been slumbering peacefully, woke at the unexpected jolt; his mother, who had till then been pushing the pram, let out an exasperated sigh as the child began to wail.

Setting the rusted brake, the young woman stepped to the front of the buggy, bracing herself to manually lift the rubber wheel from its concrete prison. Between the ramshackle state of the buggy and the dilapidation of the streets they more and more often found themselves frequenting, this situation was one that was all too familiar to her and her child. The pram was heavy and cumbersome, and a more coddled woman might have requested assistance from a passing gentleman; but this particular young mother had grown stronger out of necessity—and anyway, there was hardly a surplus of what one would call gentlemen in this particular part of town—and she soon had the carriage freed. As she released the brake, ready to continue on, she noticed how loose the springs in the mechanism had become, and resolved to hunt for yet more spare bits of twine to mend them with.

For a very short time, her future had seemed perfect. Perhaps not as blissful and carefree as she might have imagined it when she was a girl, but still, as any passing stranger might have objectively described it, perfect: she, Christine Daae, a common singer—and an even more fairytale-appropriate penniless peasant before that—was going to marry Raoul de Chagny, a man who not only loved her dearly, but was also a handsome, rich young vicomte, as well as her childhood friend! Even more shocking, almost _too_ fairytale for even _her_ to believe it, Raoul's elder brother, the Comte de Chagny, who had previously threatened extreme measures to block their engagement, had rescinded his objections and given them his blessing! Neither she nor Raoul could quite comprehend Philippe's words when he'd stood before them and given Raoul his permission to continue courting her. Even in her wildest fantasies of being able to marry Raoul, the acceptance of his brother had never figured into the equation. She knew she would have been daft to call the situation she had found herself in anything _but_ perfect, and incredibly ungrateful besides.

How far away it all seemed now.

She'd been evicted that morning; it had only been a matter of time, and came as little surprise to Christine. Her Mama, God rest her soul, had left her alone with only three things in the world: a small collection of paintings the venerable lady had done of her home in Sweden; a violin that Christine described as having belonged to her father; and a stack of unpaid debts. The paintings she had held onto for as long as possible—lovely watercolours and oil miniatures that Mama had painted in the days before the aches in her wrists and fingers had left her unable to hold a spoon, let alone a brush—but they finally had to be sacrificed, first to keep her guardian out of a pauper's grave, and later to keep herself off the streets. She had moved from one cheap flat to another, and then to a single rented room, until finally even that lowest tier of lodgings was impossible to maintain. Now there was nothing left to sell, with the exception of the violin—but try as she might she couldn't bear to part with it, and it remained with them, the third member of their little family, concealed against the underside of the pram, bound to the metal framework with even more twine.

If anyone had asked, Raoul and Christine would have given the credit for the Comte's reversal to each other: Raoul indicating his fiancée's earnest efforts to impress his brother, and she pointing to all Raoul had done in order to help her transition from scandal-prone singer to presentable aristocrat. Raoul really had done so much to help her, in ways both material and intangible. He'd begun the very morning after they'd escaped the cellars—while she still lay prone and paralysed by shock and guilt in a guest room of the de Chagny house—by purchasing a number of fine new dresses and having them tailored under the guidance of one of the Opera's seamstresses who'd previously measured Christine for her costumes, so that she would have something suitable to wear until she had recovered sufficiently from her ordeal to have an entire new wardrobe befitting a vicomtess commissioned.

He'd also brought in a throng of tutors, after Christine had had a few weeks to recover her strength, to convince his brother that his new bride would be on an intellectual level with the young wives of his peers; though, truthfully, this was more a show for Philippe than for Christine's benefit, as her benefactress had seen her well-educated in the days before her husband had died, when they could still afford such things. She managed to be rather offended when Raoul presented her with an etiquette instructor, insisting to him that though she had grown up on a farm it hardly meant that she had also been raised in a barn; but she was willing to put up with just about anything in the short term if it would mean their long-term happiness, and she tried to hold her tongue as much as possible as the tutor quizzed her on the proper use of soup spoons.

More difficult to bear were the music lessons. The singing lessons. Raoul had made the suggestion, but even Philippe was eager to have her sing again, as long as it wasn't in any sort of theatre or music hall; what is scandalous when one does it in exchange for money, is agreeable—nay, admirable!—when it is provided gratis in the parlours of the rich. Still, her heart had swelled when Raoul approached her with the idea: despite everything that had happened—despite the torrent of emotions that flickered over his face at the merest mention of the Opera or the sight of a scrap of sheet music—he wanted her to continue in her beloved singing. She knew how difficult it must be for him—how difficult it was for herself—but neither of them acknowledged it. She had simply smiled, and expressed her joy and eagerness to continue her lessons, and Raoul had beamed back, and pressed her hands between his. Only later—after her first lesson with her new singing master; after shrilling along to accompaniment that clanked noisily from piano keys beneath a less-than-divine hand; after she had excused herself, pleading a sore throat—did she let herself cry, or allow her thoughts to return to that last terrible night.

And to Erik...

He was gone. His end hadn't come in being struck down by an vengeful stage-hand, or a cool and well-trained officer of the Sûreté, but with a bullet from the Persian man's gun—the man she had once heard Erik call his friend—fired by her own dear Raoul. Christine didn't blame Raoul, couldn't find it in herself to hold his actions against him: he'd been so desperate to save her, so maddened by the countless hours in the mirrored jungle of the torture chamber, by the water he'd inhaled and the time he'd spent drifting in and out of a drugged unconsciousness in a dark Communard cell... He wasn't to know that Erik had already promised, weeping at her feet, to free them—just as Erik could have no foreknowledge of the pistol that had remained wedged in Raoul's belt.

When the front door of the underground house had opened she looked up, in expectation of seeing her vicomte and her angel standing side by side in peace as she had always hoped, but instead the beginning of a smile twisted into a animal cry of horror as her eyes met those of Raoul and the strange foreigner, their still sodden clothing tinged red with a spray of blood. The Persian, his face still frozen in an expression of shock, had led them from the cellars, leaving Erik to his undeniably well-deserved fate. She would have fought the two men, insisted they go back and help him, but there was _so very much_ blood: too much blood, she recognized, with a sickening twist of her stomach. Even so, her feet stumbled beneath her, and though she made no move to resist them, the men had to half carry, half drag her from the catacombs. As they exited into the blinding daylight of the Rue Scribe, locking the gate behind them and flinging the key back through the bars into the darkness, each man tried to convince himself and his conscience that their feminine companion's hysterical tears were from simple overwhelmed relief.

Six days had passed before Raoul found the courage to once again bring up the topic of their future together. Christine had finally begun to take her meals at the table with Raoul and his brother, rather than in her dim, curtained room, and Raoul took it as a hopeful sign for her improving state of mind. Though her guilt and despair at the fate of her teacher and friend hung over her like a suffocating cloud, she knew that no good would come from dwelling on that which could not be changed; if she had learned nothing else from the death of her father, it had been that. Anyway, she had already hurt so many people in her life, it only felt right to do whatever she could to make at least Raoul happy. So she smiled, and encouraged her childhood sweetheart in all his romantic fancies, throwing herself with abandon into whatever diversions he could dream up, and after awhile convinced herself that she believed in the things they said and did nearly as strongly as Raoul himself clearly did.

Between the brightening of her demeanour and her increasing application at her studies—and, crucially, the cessation of her employment at the Opera—she had soon piqued the interest of high society enough to earn her first formal invitation—which was swiftly followed by another, and then another. Her kind, compassionate nature, in combination with the reserved solemnity that seemed so odd a quality for a former opera singer to possess, was well-received wherever she went, until finally rumours of her sweet, demure character began to drift back to Philippe himself. With such immediate and undeniable social success, Philippe grudgingly began to acknowledge that his prospective sister-in-law might be an asset to the family—or at least, not as much of a possibly-flea-ridden liability to be worth causing a rift with his beloved brother over. A formal engagement was put into its planning stages, and rumours flew over when the marriage would be announced.

It wasn't until work began on the future vicomtesse's new wardrobe and trousseau that what would be the fatal crack began to appear in the hitherto perfection. To save time and needless effort, the seamstresses had begun preliminary work on the clothing based on the original costume measurements they had used when they'd adjusted the first set of dresses. Imagine their befuddlement when their client visited to check the fit of the newly drafted garments, and they found that all of their exactingly precise measurements were now incorrect—and particularly in a few places that gave them pause. They feigned ignorance, politely apologizing for their recklessness in measuring incorrectly, and sent the young woman on her way with the promise of an extra dressing gown thrown in without charge to make up for the inconvenience—but the moment Christine had left the shop the other women's mouths began to water and tongues wag at the salacious bit of gossip they'd uncovered. They were still speculating amongst themselves when a certain ballerina of l'Opera arrived at the shop to pick up a gift her patron had promised her...

Philippe was positively irate when Sorelli told him of what she had heard: he scrambled to his feet so abruptly that the usually graceful dancer quite tumbled to the floor, glaring up at the Comte as he excused himself and left her to finish the rest of her supper alone. But whatever envy Sorelli might have felt toward Raoul for stealing her dining companion away was entirely unwarranted: Philippe confronted Raoul immediately and violently.

Christine eavesdropped through the heavy parlour door to the heated voices, her heart pounding in terror as she listened to her hard-won happily-ever-after fall apart. None of the kindness that had recently begun to soften the Comte's voice was present as he demanded, "for the sake of our _sisters_' reputations, if you're too selfish to do it for mine or your own" that his brother drop "that opera _tramp_".

Christine hadn't told Raoul of her suspicions—couldn't have begun to find the words. She'd been reassured by his apparent continued lack of realisation, and he had had more opportunity to notice the change in her than had most. Their wedding had been so near in the future, she had naively hoped that maybe it was close _enough_, that maybe no one else would detect the increasing tightness of her dresses either, at least until after they were safely married. It was all her fault: if only she had could have managed to lace her corset just a _bit_ tighter before her fitting; if only she had somehow been more careful; if only she had never gotten Raoul mixed up in her disaster of a life in the first place...it seemed no man could be move through her life without being ruined by the meeting.

Great tears of both love and guilt poured down her face as she listened to Raoul's valiant defence of her, and she was just on the verge of throwing open the door and rushing in to help him plead her case to Philippe, or at least to prevent Raoul from hurting himself any farther—but then her hand froze on the door handle, for she had heard the words that she knew a hundred years of pleas and reasoning would be unable to dislodge from Raoul's mind:

"And what if it _isn't_ yours?" Philippe had hissed.

Raoul could still have objected to Philippe's intrusion in his life, reaffirmed his intent to marry his love even after this latest scandalous development—he wouldn't have been the first to follow that path, even in the de Chagny's own storied family history—but the suggestion, so silkily insidious, and all too terrifyingly possible for Raoul's comfort, that perhaps Christine had betrayed him in that most corporeal of ways—that perhaps her tears _hadn't_ been of relief after all—that was too much for him to bear. Even if the wedding went ahead as planned; even if Philippe had a miraculous change of heart and took back everything he'd said; even if Raoul would insist he believed her: once those contemptible words had been said they would echo tormentingly at the back of her fiancé's mind forever, and Christine knew it. There would be no point in arguing that the child was his own—and it wasn't as though there were any way of proving it, regardless—it would be solely her word against the malicious voices that whisper at the back of every man's brain; and as much as Raoul loved her, Christine knew he had and would always nurse a flicker of distrust towards her in matters concerning her former teacher.

She had already resolved to forgive him for what she knew he would do before he even left his brother's side—and she continued telling herself so even as he stood by and looked on blankly, though sorrowfully, as his once-adored sweetheart was escorted out into the street by Philippe's valet. Even Philippe, stodgy old stone that he was, seemed a bit taken aback at Raoul's coldness; but then, Philippe's suspicions as to the paternity of the child Christine carried extended no deeper than some greasy stage-hand or Opera stableman.

Raoul had turned away as the door closed on the future he had once so desperately wanted, and left to prepare himself for the Navy mission that had already been so long delayed. He would go to the Arctic with visions of Little Lotte, who would never betray him, in his mind; and though he would many a time think he saw a Korrigan skipping over the ice, he would never again see the lights of Paris or the woman his flesh and blood Lotte had become, nor the child he had abandoned her with.

The baby carriage rattled over another bump in the pavement, eliciting a soft cry from selfsame child, who had only just quieted after the last disturbance. "Shh, it's alright," Christine cooed softly, reaching down to adjust the blanket that shielded his tiny face from the wind—almost like a mask, she thought. Sighing again, she continued walking. "It'll be alright..." She wasn't sure she believed it herself anymore, but the act of saying the words brought her some small measure of comfort. Perhaps she _had_ believed it at one time, when she still had her Papa to look after her, when Mama Valerius was still alive..when the voice of an Angel could chase away all her worries... But not anymore.

But maybe her son did, so she continued, for his sake: "It will be alright."

Christine had moved back in with Mama, who—though she was unable to understand not only that the engagement to Raoul had been broken off, but that there had ever been an engagement in the first place—was very pleased to see her adoptive daughter return to her; Christine was likewise grateful for Mama Valerius' poor eyesight. The first thing Christine did was dismiss their maid, as much to keep the girl from spreading rumours as to conserve their increasingly limited funds. As callous as it made her feel, Christine also couldn't help but be grateful for the old woman's lack of friends, for it meant she had no access to the gossip swirling around her daughter: if she had heard of the scandal brewing under her own roof, the shock of the news might have killed her. Christine owed the old woman so much; making the last weeks of her life as peaceful as possible was the least she could do to thank her. Christine had known that her guardian had been rapidly deteriorating as of late, but she had been certain she would have more time than she did...but two short months crept by, and Christine was alone.

The Opera had refused to take her back. One can only cause so much bad publicity before people start to hate the sight (and sound) of you, especially in theatre. She had been extremely lucky to hold onto her position after her frequent bouts of 'illness' and the attendant leave she had taken; disappearing during her final performance and then, to all appearances, flitting off for a three-month dalliance with a vicomte before crawling back to beg for her job was just the final straw on the back of an already far-overburdened camel. Even if the management _had_ allowed her back in, the scorn she would have faced from the other singers for her blatant attempt at social climbing would have made the few weeks she would have been able to continue performing there unbearable. That didn't stop her from trying to audition anyway, but the day she heard a few passing chorus members whispering about her 'condition' as she waited outside the singing master's office was the last she stepped through the administration doors of the Opera.

She tried to seek other means of earning money, but even the reassuring presence of the gold band she had worn on her finger wasn't enough to cause prospective employers to turn a blind eye to the gentle swell of her stomach.

Christine couldn't altogether understand how she had survived through the following next seven months, to now find herself standing on a jagged spit of pavement with no home to return to, but there she was nonetheless. She knew that for many days prior to her son's birth she had been bedridden, but her memories of that time had been lost in a fog of feverish delirium that hadn't abated until her baby lay in her arms, so very tiny and frail, but blessedly alive. She couldn't even remember if a midwife had attended her, having no recollection of the presence of any people other than the wife of the man she was renting her tiny room from, who had apparently decided that a living tenant could pay their bills more readily than could a dead one, and so had deigned to help Christine with some small things to ensure she didn't perish in her childbed. However selfish the reasons for it might have been, Christine was grateful. She was _less_ appreciative of the way she'd been thrown out like so much garbage when her landlord realised that, alive or not, and for all her insistence that she was on the verge of finding work, she wouldn't be able to pay her rent afterall. Her son was only two months old, and already on the streets.

Her next breath was strangled off by a sharp stab of pain—feeling like nothing so much as a knife burying itself deep in her throat, and then wrenching brutally upward—as she was convulsed by a violent fit of coughing. Tears pricked her eyes as she buried her face in her sleeve, trying her best to shield her child from the disease-laden air that choked from her lungs. She wanted to turn away, to divert herself from any such risk entirely, but already the world had begun to spin before her eyes, and she clung desperately to the push handle of the pram so as not to collapse. The spasm ended, but she remained still for several long moments, her quivering body still resting heavily against the buggy, her vision clouded by dark spots. Steeling herself, she took a few shallow experimental breaths, and was relieved to find them bearably smooth. After closely examining the fabric of her sleeve for a moment, she wiped a few wayward tears from her cheeks, and shakily continued walking.

The cough frightened her, in a way that she hardly dared to think about. She had yet to waken to the tell-tale spatter of blood on her pillow, or to choke the same crimson spots onto her handkerchief, but she knew it could happen any day...she could remember how it had started with her father.

That was what frightened her the most—not dying, no: the greatest terror of Christine's heart was the thought of abandoning her son in the same way her father had left her. Christine had had the generosity and benevolence of the Valeriuses to fall back on; she would leave her own child without a friend in the world—and she had at least been old enough to remember how much her Papa loved her; her own son would have no such comfort, even though his father still lived.

She tried not to think about her sickness, remembering something she had once been told about illness being at least partly conjured up by people's own minds, but as much as she attempted to ignore the catch in her throat, the seizing pain in her chest, they only became worse. And she'd felt so ill, so weak, for such a long time now... or perhaps not: she had trouble remembering sometimes; it felt like years, but it couldn't have been more than a few months, when she thought about it. Taking as deep a breath as she dared lest she set off another attack, she rolled the pram toward the curb, with the intention of crossing the street.

There was no slant in the edge of the pavement, no friendly dip in the steep curb that might have allowed a baby carriage or handcart to ease its way onto the road, and Christine had to carefully lift first the front, then the rear of the buggy down onto the street. Half-way through this well-rehearsed routine, the wheels jammed yet again. As before, it refused to budge, though this time there was no such obvious cause for the stall as the grasping fingers of a crevice in the pavement. In frustration Christine shoved her meagre weight against the handle; a bit harder than she had intended, she realised too late.

Without warning, the tires relinquished their grip on the curb, and before Christine could catch hold of the handle, the pram had leapt out into the street. "No!" she cried weakly, picking up her skirts and scrambling after it. She could feel the threat of another cough crawling its way up the back of her throat, but she ignored it and pushed forward, gasping—only to trip over some of the myriad refuse that littered the gutter, her head narrowly missing an impact with the road. She pushed herself back on her ankles, readying to spring back to her feet and chase after the pram, which had continued to roll across the road, but found herself frozen, horror-struck, as a cab came around the corner and clattered toward the buggy, the horse's feet only inches from trampling it beneath them—

But then a tall man, wearing a dark hat and cloak, swept gracefully off of the opposite curb and yanked the baby and pram to safety just in the knick of time. Tears of relief poured from Christine's eyes as she finally managed to stand and hurry toward her son and his rescuer. In the blur of panic and relief and tears and her own mild near-sightedness, the man almost looked like... No. She extinguished the painful thought.

"Erik!" she cried, reaching into the buggy to retrieve her son. He was crying again—startled awake by the sudden jerk, his face flushed with the sort of indignation that only an infant is capable of—but he was safe. She cuddled him close to her breast, whispering a babel of soft words to him—some in Swedish, which she could not remember the precise meaning of, but she could recall her mother saying to her when she was little—until he began to calm, and again: "It will be alright". He looked up at her with what she might almost have called annoyance at the continued interruptions to his slumber, seemingly oblivious to the calamity he had so narrowly escaped, and she could have laughed if she wasn't already crying so hard. She had pressed a dozen fervent tearful kisses to her son's velvety hair before it began to dawn on Christine that she had yet to so much as acknowledge her child's saviour. "Thank you, Monsieur!" she began, eyes still fixed on her baby, "I don't know what I would have—"

"It was my duty...Vicomtesse," the man said with a slight bow. He spoke in a strange tone, his tone lilting up as though he were asking a question. Christine looked up in shock: not only out of being addressed in such a way, but because of the familiarity of the man's distinctive accent. "No thanks are necessary."

"Monsieur...?" she questioned; he looked as bewildered as she felt.

"I'm not sure if you would remember me, Madame," he said, shifting the shade cast by his hat so she could see him better. "I assisted your fian—your husband—last year, when you..." he trailed off with an awkward non-committal gesture.

"Oh, yes," she replied quickly, as much to save herself the grief of thinking about that night as to rescue him from his embarrassment. She could remember the Persian gentleman, this friend of Erik's—but how different he looked now, how much older he seemed! "How have you been?" she asked lamely.

"I have only just returned from a very long journey," he said, clearly glad for the change in topic. "After...that night...I decided to leave Paris for awhile. What an extraordinary coincidence that I should encounter you so soon after my return." The man spent a long moment choosing his next words, his eyes trailing from the child nestled in Christine's arms, to the rags they both wore, to the poorly-maintained twine-tangled buggy whose handle he still clutched. "And...how have _you_ fared this past year, Madame?" Christine could feel her shame prickling the back of her neck as he continued to stare at her, obviously baffled by this presumed vicomtesse's obvious poverty, her dress more resembling a patchwork quilt than any single fabric.

"Mademoiselle, Monsieur," she responded quietly, eyes downcast, for once glad of the vacant nature of the streets.

"Pardon me?" Christine's face coloured in humiliation, losing for a brief moment its deathly pallor.

"I did not marry the Vicomte, Monsieur..." Her left hand had shifted upwards, clutching the swaddled infant more closely to her, and the Persian man's gaze flickered toward the bare spot on her pale stick-like finger that, had all been right with the world, should have held a wedding ring. His eyes widened slightly in sudden comprehension of her situation, and he let his eyes drift back toward the baby. He opened his mouth as though to ask her something, but closed it, apparently reconsidering before beginning again. "'Erik', you called him?"

Christine flushed, nodding her assent. She made no effort of correcting the assumptions that she could already see playing across his face. What had she to gain in telling a truth no one would believe anyway? The name had just felt right to her, and she was tired of putting on a face of presentability for people who would hate her no matter what she did.

"I see," he finally breathed, smiling sadly at the child with an unreadable look in his eyes. "Are you in need of any assistance?" he looked back up to Christine, his voice earnest as he continued, "Is there anything, anything at all that I can do to help you...?" She bristled self-consciously at the pity in his eyes.

"No, thank you, Monsieur," she replied evenly, without any hesitation. Christine had changed in the past year in ways that went much deeper than the wanness of her face or the tautness of her skin.

The man opened his mouth, seemingly preparing to speak, but he shook away the thought without voicing it, closing his eyes for a moment before he next spoke. "Very well. Good luck to you, Mademoiselle." After making a short bow, and glancing one last time at the baby in Christine's arms, the Persian man straightened his hat and walked quickly away, his body tense with the restraint it took to keep himself from turning back. Christine watched him go, her eyes following his dark figure until he finally hailed a cab and was lost to her vision within the dark coach. How strange, she couldn't help but think, that the very assumption that had caused one man to abandon her could incline another so strongly in the opposite direction.

They managed the rest of their journey without further incident, the pram apparently having decided to cooperate for once, and soon mother and child sat tranquilly in the shade of one of the many oak trees lining the bank of the upper lake of the Bois de Boulogne. Just a few minutes to relax before planning her next move, Christine had decided. Then she would find another job—sewing, or cleaning perhaps—and as soon as she'd done that, she would be able to rent another room to keep them out of the cold. They would be alright...if she could only manage to convince herself to believe in 'alright' again.

The hard stone of the bench was cold and comfortless through the thin layers of her threadbare skirts, but the baby cradled in her arms filled her with an inner warmth, and she smiled as they watched older children—richer children—chase some of the park's numerous ducks. She'd removed her boots, eager to feel the first new soft grass underfoot after so many months of hard winter, and her son lay back against her, gurgling happily. To an outside observer—and there were more than a few, staring at her odd bare-footedness, though Christine disregarded them—the young woman would have appeared to be entirely lost in the beauty of the day; in actuality her thoughts were occupied somewhere much darker, much colder, five cellars beneath the Palais Garnier...

For a moment, when he first stepped from the curb, his dark cloak swirling around his tall frame, the Persian man had looked incredibly like Erik... Or perhaps it was simply her own poor mind playing tricks on her? Still, for the briefest fraction of an instant, she had almost dared to hope it was him. She sighed, leaning back against the trunk of the mighty tree.

Sometimes she wondered what Erik would think if he could have seen the increasingly pathetic state she had fallen victim to. She couldn't bear to contemplate what her Papa or Mama Valerius's thoughts would have been; but she knew that Erik had seen much worse in his life, and so she liked to think that he might have at least somewhat of a chance of understanding, if not feeling compassion for, the plight of one so shunned by civilized society. Yet at the same time, he more than anyone would be hard pressed to forgive the early death that her illness had already brought to her once inspired voice, making her son's lullabies sound ever more like the cries of the crow it had had once been compared to by the ballet girls, punctuated by ragged coughs, than the fine soprano that had only a year ago been proclaimed as heaven-sent. When she dared to try to imagine the look that might cross his face were he to hear the strained notes that now wheezed from between her cracked lips, she found that she had to forcefully drag her thoughts back to the present, to focus on anything other than those dark thoughts.

The still-feeble early-spring sun was soothing against Christine's face, and the brisk air was filled with the happy squeals of the children and the scandalized squawking of their feathered quarry. The din slowly fell gradually away into soft contented quacks as the ducks finally escaped to the centre of the lake, far beyond the reach of their tiny tormentors. She watched the birds swim in lazy circles for a long time, looking like so many white clouds drifting across the sky-blue glass of the lake's surface.

_to be concluded_


	2. Part Two

Alright, here's the second half! Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed the story please considering taking the time to leave a review. :)

**A New Way Home**

_part two_

When Christine awoke it was dark, the park cold and deserted. There was no sound except for the fussing of the baby, whose fidgeting had caused Christine to stir. She had only intended to close her eyes for a moment, to let the cool spring breeze caress her face and run its fingers through her golden hair, but the quiet hum of the air and the warm sun on her skin had sent her into a slumber as readily as any of her Papa's lullabies ever had.

The early spring thaw had retreated with the setting sun, and glittering frost laced the edges of the lake, sparkling like so many flecks of crushed diamond in the moonlight—shattered crystals from a broken chandelier. The grass, which had earlier been so smooth and supple against her bare toes, was now hard and cold—as were her feet themselves, and she struggled clumsily to force them back into her boots. The green blades crackled beneath her numb feet as she stumbled to her feet and settled her child in the safe cocoon of the pram; Christine felt a rush of guilt and fear as she noticed the way he shivered. "Shh, it'll be alright," she insisted, tasting blood as her dry lips split slightly at the words. She struggled to remove her own thin shawl and added it to the collection of ragged blankets that already filled the buggy.

Shivering, Christine looked around the park once more; it was completely devoid of any other soul, and even the ducks had long since made their way to wherever it was they called home. The park wasn't entirely empty, though: her eyes had been caught by a flash of white moonlight reflecting on the far side of the lake, where a single swan floated lazily across the surface. She admired the eerily fantastic sight for a moment, and then knelt to finish lacing her boots. Her head shot back up with a start as she heard several melancholy notes suddenly burst through the still night, echoing across the lake. Her eyes scanned the wide expanse of water in search of the swan, which had surely been the source of the plaintive noise, but the beautiful creature had vanished. Christine shivered again, recalling a tale she had once been told regarding the singing of swans...

She at first impulsively thought to go home, so they could warm themselves in front of the fireplace—but was forced to discard the idea as she recalled that they no longer _had_ a home. Suddenly, for the first time in her long travail, she felt afraid: not worried, or anxious, but truly frightened. She had no idea what to do. One thing was for certain, however: she didn't want to remain in the park, with its eerie shadows and dying swans.

The shadows only continued to follow them as they left the park, creeping past in the corners of Christine's vision, matching her step-for-step as she propelled the pram quickly but aimlessly through the sleeping city. Each shade that trailed her footsteps was dark and unfamiliar, compelling her to further hasten her pace out of fear of what might lurk within the blackness, slowing only when she felt the tell-tale roughness in her throat that always preceded a coughing fit. She thought of a hundred frantic plans in those minutes, and summarily discarded each one just as quickly as it had occurred to her. A flicker of regret at rejecting the Persian man's offer of assistance wavered in her mind. Perhaps she could track down him down again; maybe he would know of some family in need of a housekeeper? But no, he had said he'd only just returned to the city after a long absence, so it was unlikely he'd have such information—and anyway, she had no idea where to even begin to look for him. She felt ashamed of her stubborn pride in refusing his help earlier. Her newly-asserted sense of self-sufficiency would do her and her child little good if they froze to death in the streets, or worse. It was small comfort to know that she had at least prevented one more person from being pulled into her tragedy.

She'd pushed the buggy another frantic several blocks before Christine finally accepted that she didn't know where they were even headed. In a way, it was oddly freeing to know that there wasn't anywhere in particular that they _had_ to go, but Christine had never had the wanderer's spirit of her father, and longed for a safe harbour even as she unwillingly revelled in the strange liberty of their new situation—and Paris wasn't home to the abundance of warm haylofts that had sheltered her as a child. At a loss, she paused for a moment, halfway between two cross-streets, and looked down at her baby, who had awakened, though he no longer cried, having found satisfactory warmth with the addition of Christine's shawl. He looked up at her with the wide blue eyes that could have been hers or Raoul's, seeming just as curious and puzzled about their intended destination as she. Smiling, Christine reached into the buggy, brushing her hand softly along the side of his face, and over his soft blond hair. "Well," she laughed distractedly, her voice pitched in fear despite her best efforts to hide it, "where would you like to go, darling?" The baby just giggled, as happy to have his mother's attention as his namesake would once have been. She began to walk again.

She felt as though she'd been walking for hours, her breath trailing in little frozen clouds behind her—and had begun to wonder if she'd at last forgotten the once familiar way—when she finally crossed the last intervening block and found herself at the edge of the Rue Scribe. She hadn't been anywhere near the Opera House since, well... but now, she had nowhere else to go, so why not go there? Yet she didn't approach the concealed entrance, rather remaining at the corner of the street: there was no question of trying to sneak back into Erik's house—or whatever was left of it—as she had lost her key long ago. Even if she could get past the gate, there would still be the many traps and tripwires to contend with, which, though easy enough for Erik to navigate, would be nearly impossible for a woman with a baby at her breast. Anyway—and her heart clenched painfully at this thought—there was always the chance that no one _had_ ever found the house by the lake...that the Persian had never returned to give him a proper burial...that Erik might still lay where he fell in some dark corridor, or maybe he had managed to crawl back to the house, and... Christine shook her head to rid it of the morbid spiral of imagination it had begun to descend into. She couldn't go back down there.

She began to wonder why she had thought it a good idea to go to the Opera at all—when it only increased her misery and her child's chances of catching a chill—at a time that she should be finding someplace warm for them to sleep. Already the gaps between her own fits of shivering had vanished entirely; worse, the baby's shivering had returned, despite the best efforts of her shawl. She had already wasted an entire day on dawdling; she couldn't afford to continue it into the early hours of morning as well.

Truthfully, deep within her heart she knew very well what the reason for her stalling was. She had known this day would come, and was loathe to accept it even now that it had: this was the day that she would have to sell the violin. The tears that had been steadily gathering in her eyes as she looked toward the great building overflowed their boundaries and streamed down her pale cheeks as she finally admitted it to herself. She felt horrid, unfit to even be a mother, for endangering her child out of her attachment to the instrument, but it was her only tangible connection to not only her father, but to Erik as well. Her Papa's actual violin, of course, lay alongside him in the ancient cemetery at Perros-Guirec; but this one had once sounded so very similar that it had once fooled even Christine's discerning ear. She had blindly grasped at the instrument as though it was a life-preserver when her blood-stained suitor had come to 'liberate' her from the house by the lake, refusing to leave it in the cellars, and shrieking that it was her father's when Raoul at last tried to pry her fingers from the finely shaped wood. Months ago, when she had finally been forced to sell Erik's ring—his final gift to her, and her last shred of protection from the glares of the righteous—she had consoled herself with the knowledge that she would at least still have the violin; now that she would lose it, too, she knew she would mourn it like a lost love. But it was a fine instrument—Erik wouldn't have owned it if it wasn't—and its sale would earn her enough money to stay off the streets just a little longer, that one last chance to find a job and provide properly for her son.

Still, she couldn't yet quite force her feet in the direction of the pawnbroker's shop that she was sure she could recall being nearby, not when she was so very close to the building that had once meant so much to her. She gazed up at the grand edifice, imagining that she could almost see Apollo's outstretched arms beckoning her home with a welcoming embrace. Here the pavements were impeccably-kept and clean, a well-maintained lamppost shining at every street corner, lest the fashionable patrons of the Opera should have to take more than three steps in the dark (in fact, the only place that remained hidden in the shadows was the stretch of wall which she knew held the gate, and she wondered, not for the first time, if Erik had planned it that way on purpose). The extra lights were put to good use in the narrow streets that wrapped around the Opera, most of the moonlight being obscured by the great building itself. If things had gone better, she might have pushed her baby's pram down these streets during the daylight, her arm linked with that of her handsome husband.

"This is the Opera," she whispered to the sleeping baby, her voice shaking from the violence of her shivering, hoping he would understand her words, and have beautiful dreams, as she once had, "Someday we'll go there together, and I'll sing for you."

Somewhere, a clock struck the hour, but Christine found it too difficult to keep count of the chimes. Regardless, this undeniable mark of the passage of time was finally enough to compel her numb feet forward, and slowly, as if she was afraid to break the fragile silence that followed the sounding of the bells, she rolled the baby carriage from the pavement and towards the opposite curb, in the direction she felt the shop lay. Once more she was confronted with the dilemma of manoeuvring the pram onto a steep curb, the task's difficulty increased immensely by the frigid numbness that had overwhelmed her limbs. Her fingers fumbled clumsily with the handle as she struggled to remember how she had managed the task so easily so many times before. Finally Christine managed to get two of the wheels shifted up and was working on the third, when, after having been perpetually on its last legs, the buggy finally decided to give up the ghost entirely. The stressed axle snapped, one of the rear wheels she had been battling rolling off into the gutter, the underside of the buggy grinding roughly against the edge of the curb with a sickening crunch that hit Christine like a punch to the stomach, sending her heart into her throat.

She didn't need to look—didn't want to look—to know that the violin would never be played again—and what pawnbroker would pay for a violin that cannot be played? The horrible splintering noise was punctuated by the weak keening cries of her child, terrified awake by the racket and sudden lurch. Ignoring him for the moment in her shock, Christine reached underneath the newly-lopsided baby carriage, only to have her final shred of tentative hope ripped apart as her hand came away with the splintered peg box of the once beautiful instrument, the rest of its mangled body following after, dangling from the a sole unbroken string. Christine let the tangled mess of wood and metal fall from her hand with a clatter that only increased the baby's faint wails.

With a mechanical calm, she scooped her son up from the carriage, not bothering to gather the mass of blankets along with him, not even making any attempt to shush him as he continued his plaintive whimpers. Walking out of the circle of lamplight that was a glaring accusatory spotlight on this last cataclysm in the tragedy of her life, she stumbled back along the Rue Scribe on legs she had long since lost the feeling in, running her hands vainly along the shadowed wall in search of the gate—until she discovered the patch of ill-matching brickwork, a now-sealed archway that had once held a door to a different world. She couldn't put into words the sorrow she felt when as she beheld that blank brick wall-perhaps she _had_ hoped to make her way back to the house tonight, after all; she couldn't quite remember anymore. She wondered when the gate had been blocked off—if the masons had even investigated where the strange passage led before covering it—but it hardly mattered. There was no sign of an entrance now, and nothing except her word to say that one had ever even existed. She might have imagined it all, though she could still smell the tang of iron that the key had always left on her hand when she turned it in the lock.

The brick was rough and cold against her back as she let her body slide down the wall, pricking tiny holes and pulling at the loose threads in the thin, dingy fabric of her dress. For once, she couldn't summon the faith or strength to recite her comforting old platitude. It would never be alright, and she knew it now with a certainty, no matter how much she had tried to convince herself otherwise. Even the baby seemed to sense his mother's resignation, and had stopped crying. Closing her eyes, she sighed deeply, begging God, her father, Erik, her Mama, Raoul, her son, to forgive her for her damnable weakness.

She couldn't have said how long she sat there; it might have been minutes, or hours, or indeed, days, had the continued darkness not told her otherwise. She remembered being grateful that her shivering had finally stopped, at least.

"Christine...?" a soft whisper on the breeze; a dream. But, again: "Christine...?" She looked up with difficulty, her neck painful and stiff, searching for the source of the voice.

"Christine...?" a bit louder, a bit closer.

She finally saw it: a dark shape sheltering in the shadow of a pillar a distance farther down the Rue Scribe, its face lost in the shadow of a broad-brimmed felt hat. "Who...?" she whispered, her voice cracking, bewildered as to who it was that would recognize her in such a state—maybe the Persian man? The figure shifted slightly, and she caught a glint of reflection: the twin fires of a pair of yellow eyes glowing eerily in the darkness beneath the hat. "Erik...?" she breathed.

Though her senses mumblingly goaded her to stand, to run toward the spectre and grasp the edge of his cloak to discover if what she saw was really true, she found that her body had become paralysed, too heavy and sluggish to respond to her impulse to pursue the shade. Though she found she _could_ still move her eyes, she kept them fixed on her shadowy companion. It couldn't possibly be...But, no, it _had _to be, for now he was stepping more fully into the light, tilting his hat back to bare the full expanse of his singular face: there he stood, as though he'd never been gone. "Erik!" she cried, though she was still unable to move.

"Christine... What has happened to you?" he finally said softly, calmly, moving slowly toward her and blending once more with the shadows that filled the expanse between the street-lamp and the place she crouched. Christine thought perhaps she was too stunned at his reappearance to be offended at his pitying words—or maybe it was the way that the shadow's eyes glowed with solace rather than the patronizing sorrow that she'd seen in those of the Persian.

"Many things," she said simply.

She was totally overwhelmed for a moment, as visions of the past year, and the life that had led to it, spun through her mind, making her dizzy, and she doubled over, reflexively bracing herself for the coughing fit that she was certain the sudden turmoil would trigger; but for once her cough was blessedly absent. Taking this as a hopeful sign, she took several slow, shallow, and equally painless breaths, and straightened once more to face Erik, but he had vanished. She twisted around, searching frantically for the familiar dark figure, but he was gone.

Gathering her sleeping baby more tightly to herself, she tried to push herself up, using the wall behind her for leverage, but without any success. "Erik!" she cried into the darkness, now fearing for her sanity as well as her health. Just when she had almost accepted that his appearance had been merely some cruel mirage of her mind, she felt the ghost of a touch at the top of her head, the soft caress of a hand brushing across her golden curls, as gentle as the wind had earlier. She gasped and turned her head, finding herself looking straight into the cat-like eyes of the Opera Ghost as he knelt beside her.

"Oh, Erik," she whispered, barely audibly, her voice quivering with unshed tears, "is it really you?"

"Who else?" he said, and as she stared at his bare skull-like face she knew the truth of his words. Gently, almost without touching her, he twined his long fingers around her elbow and helped her to her feet. How extraordinary, she thought, that his guiding presence made it that much easier to stand. "Where is your vicomte, Christine?" Erik said after a moment, a quiet sadness taking the place of the bitterness and hatred that had used to colour his voice whenever he spoke of Raoul. "He promised that he would take care of you." Christine closed her eyes.

"Raoul is gone," she said quietly, waiting for the customary tide of shame and regret that always rushed over her when she thought of him, of what had happened between them, but it never came; instead, a different feeling overwhelmed her: one of true forgiveness, infinitely more heartfelt and real than anything she had previously felt—but this was not _Raoul's _forgiveness: "And it's not my fault," she finished, tears of relief prickling at her eyes. Erik simply nodded in reply, seemingly satisfied with the answer. They began to walk. Somewhere along the way, his hand slid down her arm to grasp her hand in his own; it was much warmer than she remembered it, and the contact chased the lingering chill from her bones. Together they made their way toward the street, to the curb where the ruined remnants of the pram and violin still lay.

"Your violin..." Christine gestured toward the splinters of wood protruding from the underside of the buggy. An apology died in her throat as she realized how little it truly mattered. What need had she for it anymore, after all, now that Erik was with her once more?

Erik smiled knowingly, showing that he hadn't lost any of his skill at perceiving her thoughts. She smiled back broadly, feeling better than she had in months. She wanted to say a hundred things to him—to apologize for her voice; to beg his forgiveness for what Raoul had done; to ask where he had been all this time—but for some reason none of these things seemed important anymore. Her baby began to burble happily against her shoulder, seemingly intent on reminding his mother of his presence, and Christine shifted to better show the infant to Erik, without even a pause to worry what he might think of the presence of Raoul's child in her arms.

"He looks just like his mother," Erik said, continuing to smile as he let his tiny namesake grasp one of his thin fingers in his tiny fist. "Come," he said, turning and leading Christine and her baby once more in the direction of the brick wall that had once been a gate.

"Erik?" Christine asked. Her feet stalled as she was hit with a sudden inexplicable spasm of fear. He met her clear blue eyes with his own golden ones, and she felt immensely comforted. But still, she couldn't stop herself from giving her question voice: "Where are we going?" He seemed to consider for the briefest of moments, before smiling softly again.

"Home, Christine," Erik said, as he led the way through the gate on the Rue Scribe side of the Opera Garnier. "I've been waiting to take you home."


End file.
